Will the Price Be No Object
by Nocturnias
Summary: Sometimes lines blur once they are crossed. LJ prompt fill, contains dubcon elements but not rape, and romantic smut.


I'm not a martyr,

I'm not a prophet

And I won't preach to you,

But here's a caution.

You better understand

That I won't hold your hand,

But if it helps you mend

Then I won't stop it.

Go on and save yourself,

And take it out on me

"Cochise," Audioslave

She wasn't sure exactly what did it.

Maybe it was the way he'd cast his eyes around the living room for all of 5 seconds. Or the way he'd stared at her for just a moment too fast, as though he was seeing past her. Maybe she was just being overly sensitive in the face of his horrific personal tragedy, having pushed her own wants and needs aside for him once too often.

Or maybe it had been his cutting comment. One cutting comment too many at a time when he should have simply been thanking her.

"Really, Molly, I don't understand why you even have make-up," he'd said as he walked out of her lavatory. "It isn't as though you're attracting any suitors."

Whatever it was, Molly had quite simply had enough. More than enough. And God help her, but she couldn't hold it in any longer. She was exhausted and sad and afraid and savagely, recklessly hurt.

She rounded on Sherlock so quickly even he didn't see it coming. "You're right," she said in a low, angry voice. A quiet voice with the fury slowly simmering underneath, building up vehemence and velocity with every word she spoke. "I'm not attracting any suitors. Because I spend all my time pining over an indifferent arse that just likes to chew me up and spit me out."

Sherlock frowned. Molly took a step toward him. He took a step back as though that would protect him from her unexpected infuriation. But her flat didn't have enough room for that. The entire universe didn't have enough room for that. "Molly-"

"No, no, why would you treat me any differently?" She cut him off sharply, still advancing on him slowly as he backed away equally slowly. "All I've ever done is smuggle you body parts, give you unauthorized morgue access, try to buy you the perfect Christmas present, stay late, cancel plans, fetch you coffee, and oh, yes: save your fucking life and lie to everyone we know and the world in general about it and risk my job and my future. "

By the time she finished, she had him backed up against the wall near the sofa with her only a few feet away from him. She stared up at him. "You're right, Sherlock. Who would want a woman like that?" She asked, a sound caught between a laugh and a sob tearing itself from her throat.

He had the grace to look uneasy. A little guilty, even. "I never meant-"

"No. You never do, do you?" She asked. "You get a blank check because you're Sherlock Holmes and it doesn't matter if you treat people like shit. Well it does, Sherlock. It does."

She felt hot, bitter tears slide down her face. "But I love you. Even now with you breaking my heart yet again, I still love you. You're an idiot. You're the king of idiots but I let you do it so I guess I'm the grand master."

"Molly, don't," he said softly, his eyes slightly glassy and his expression haunted. "Don't."

"Don't what?" She asked, anger quashing the sadness that had threatened to envelop her. "Don't tell you how I feel? Don't tell you the truth? I thought you _liked_ the truth, Sherlock. You certainly love spouting off about it. Mouth too small, breasts too small…"

She took the final step toward him; the one that brought her so close she could feel the heat and turmoil radiating from him. "Long term hopes, however forlorn," she quoted, and the part of her that was bleeding for herself and not for him took pleasure from his flinch. "Remember? Of course you do. All for your amusement, wasn't it? Another one of your little games to show you're clever."

She lunged forward suddenly, her momentum pressing him into the wall, trapping him between it and her. "It's always about you, isn't it. Everything for Sherlock. Nothing for Molly."

He looked alarmed and remorseful and something she couldn't decipher flitted across his face. It was that indefinable look that did it. She was so far down the road now that the only thing she could do was take it all the way to the end.

She looked down at her hands and found they were gripping his. Hard. His eyes were wild and startled like those of an animal. "All this time, you've kept me at arm's length," she said. "Pulled me closer when you wanted something and then pushed me away again. You tell me you trust me and that I count and then turn around and insult me. I've had enough, Sherlock. Can't you just once, just for once _do something for_ _me_ instead of being horrible?"

He blinked. He started to speak and his voice was all rough and scratched like an old record. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Like what, Molly?"

And with that final rush of blood to her head from the look in his eyes, she released his hands, grabbed his face, pulled him down and herself up, and crashed her lips into his.

He jerked back a bit involuntarily from the suddenness of her assault and then stilled. Molly was so tumultuous, so on the verge of exploding she didn't notice. His lips were nothing like she'd dreamed they'd be. They were surprisingly soft and warm. In her fantasies his mouth was cold, all of him was cold, and she warmed him with the strength of her passion, the heat of her love. In reality he was warmer than she was and it was his body heat that added fuel to her fire.

They stayed suspected that way for an immeasurable amount of time. All Molly was conscious of was him against her, the textures of skin and stubble and soft shirts and crisp trousers. She kissed him as though she hadn't eaten for days and he was sustenance.

Somewhere in her mind, she had the thought that what she was doing was horribly wrong, that she was violating him and that she needed to stop. And a terrible conflict seized her, because she knew she was right but-God _help_ her, she didn't want to stop.

Just as she was about to let reason to the forefront, just as she was about to step away from him in abject horror, she felt him kiss her back.

It was hesitant, almost clinical, but it was there. She sensed without knowing how that it was more from inexperience than revulsion, this caution, and it was enough to make whatever moral ground she had been about to stand on crumble and give way beneath her feet.

Her hands sank greedily into his curls, those curls her fingers had ached to touch for two years. Her mouth was just as greedy, swallowing him up whole with the kiss, her tongue uncurling into his mouth like a snake uncoiling its body. She lapped up every taste, every inch, teasing the corners of his mouth with the barest tip of her tongue. She heard a startled gasp from him, as though he'd no idea such a thing could elicit a response from his body, and she continued the onslaught, licking and tracing the outline of his lips until they parted further and she heard a soft moan from him.

She glorified in his response, a disciple who had worshiped long and faithfully and was receiving a blessing for her devotion. Her feelings for him had always been something apart from simple lust or love; they were a different kind of sacrament. She knew she still shouldn't be doing this, she really did, but he was letting her and she'd hurt so much over him and he was being responsive in a way and she just couldn't make herself stop.

She took his hands in hers again, led him down the hall and into her bedroom. She didn't turn on a light; didn't want to see the truth of what they were about to do exposed to the harsh glare of reality. Moonlight shifted through her curtained window, casting illicit shadows everywhere and catching them in its silvery rays. Discretion was best. There was no valor to be found.

She closed the door, partly out of habit, partly to shut them away into their own finite space where the outside world would not intrude. It would be here, in her room, where for now time stood still or moved at her will, that she, Molly Hooper, would finally claim her prize: Sherlock Holmes.

She stripped off her clothes quickly and efficiently, not lingering even though his eyes catalogued her every movement. She was afraid if she took too long he'd get bored or come to his senses or stop whatever it was that was making him do this. His eyes traveled up and down her body, from her thin legs to the buds of her breasts, dark dusky nipples peaked and hard already from the force of her arousal. His expression shifted minutely from curiosity to satisfaction, as though he'd perhaps wondered what her body would look like naked and now he knew. It was a strange and unsettling thought but it added to her hunger.

She moved against him and lifted her fingers to the buttons of his shirt, unfastening them with shaking fingers. He watched her watch him, no indecision or hesitancy on his face, only a slightly detached interest in her actions. She peeled the shirt off him and tossed it aside, and there was all that smooth warm skin marred by a few faint bruises from the fall and it was there for her and her alone.

She pressed against him and trailed her lips down one side of his neck, gently sucking and nipping on her way back up. His hands gripped her waist and he gasped again, his breathing slightly ragged, surprise plainly written in his eyes, darker now, pupils dilated. She wondered if, never having allowed himself, he even understood the word pleasure and that it was meant to apply to the body and not just the mind.

Her fingers ghosted over his chest, sliding down and back up again, feeling the muscle beneath the pale skin ripple as she lightly scratched her nails across his abdomen. She pressed two fingers against each nipple, hard, then grasped them and tugged. The skin puckered as his nipples hardened beneath her touch, contracting into sharp sensitive peaks, and as one hand glided over his stomach while the fingers on the other rolled his nipple between them his breathing grew more erratic and his stomach quivered at her touch.

"Molly," he whispered, and his voice echoed in the quiet of the room. It wasn't a warning or a protest: it was merely more of the surprise he'd already expressed mixed with something dangerously close to a semblance of desire. Hearing him whisper her name almost undid her right then and there; made her want to strip him, push him down, and ride him until they both cried out. But she restrained herself.

He was silent again as she reached for his belt, unbuckling it and then popping open the button and sliding down the zip. She slid his pants and trousers down, feeling the silk boxers glide between her fingers and the faint impression of the skin beneath. He continued to let her undress him, neither helping nor stopping her, and when she had stripped off his socks and tossed them aside she released his ankle; and the reality that Sherlock Holmes was naked and standing passively in front of her as she knelt in front of him hit her with a nearly overwhelming force.

It was almost too much, she almost jumped to her feet and bolted. She remembered how angry and hurt she'd been and how that seemed so far away now. A fresh rush of shame spiked with fear trickled down her chest and pooled in her stomach. She couldn't do this. Could she? Yes he was letting her but he'd never-he was only doing it because she-wasn't he? How could she face him? Face herself? Even though she needed this so badly she could explode and maybe in some perverse way she deserved it, how could she…

"No," Sherlock said sharply, and her stunned eyes looked up to meet his. "You wanted this. Now finish it."

Oh, God. He knew. Of course he did, he knew almost everything. He knew and he was telling her too… was he willing? His body was, there was no denying that, judging from the impressive erection a mere foot away from her. But acquiescence just meant that he was letting her.

Did it really matter though? This was Sherlock, and he was all she had ever wanted for two years. She could have him. It wasn't rape, right? He wasn't tied down or drugged, wasn't trying to get away from her. This wasn't how she'd wanted it, fantasized about it. But she might never get those fantasies.

The look in his eyes… he was almost smirking at her. Daring her.

What the fuck was going on here?

Something broke in her again, something savage and primal that just wanted to take him, brand him, make him hers. Her lips pressed together and she met his stare unflinchingly. Thought it was a game, did he? Right.

She reached her hands up, pleased to note that they were steady, and spread them out like fans on his upper thighs, framing the dark tight pubic curls and deep red cock that twitched and quivered as it rose up from the musky thatch of hair. She leaned in and buried her nose in that hair, nuzzling it, tugging at a few curls carefully with her mouth, feeling them stretch and spring back as she released them. She breathed his scent in deeply. He smelled just as intoxicating as she'd always imagined, with a faint trace of her soap and something spicy and deep like a forest in a desert.

She continued teasing him, licking, nuzzling, and kissing everywhere but his cock, noting absently that he had a mole on the left at the juncture of his pale thighs. She bent her head a bit and took his testicles in one hand, turning them gently this way and that, enjoying the weight and smoothness of them in her palm. He groaned, the sound faintly pleading, and she slid them all the way into her mouth with a gentle but firm gulp.

If he had been thinking about stopping her, it seemed that idea was off the table now, judging by the sudden thunderclap of his heart and the loud, unrestrained moan he gave at her action. Molly sucked his testicles, drawing them in and out of her mouth, her tongue flicking over the sensitive underside as she did, until he didn't lean back against the wall so much as fall back, his eyes half-closed and lips shiny and parted. He looked thoroughly wrecked and she felt a fierce primitive stab of pride from it.

She slid them back out of her mouth and stopped, and he groaned in disappointment, only to groan again, louder, in desperate pleasure, as she grasped his swaying cock in one hand and drew that into her mouth instead. He was thick and warm and pulsing and as he gasped and closed his eyes Molly knew that he was well and truly hers for however long this lasted.

One hand came up and his fingers threaded in her hair, not tightly, just enough to make her scalp tingle. "Molly," he whispered again, the sound of her name dreamy and reverent from his lips. He thrust his hips in time with her movements, undone by the sheer intensity of her wet hot mouth dancing over his cock, helpless and unashamedly hungry for more. It was worth every insult, every late night, every failed date in that moment to finally, _finally_ be the one who had power over him and not the other way around.

She took him to the edge, brought him back and dragged him to it again, using every ounce of skill she possessed, until he was gasping and twisting, flung out and pressed against the wall as if he was bound that way and couldn't lift his arms or struggle to close his legs against her mouth and hands. Her pleasure in breaking him down was savage; with every moan and every aching turn of his body she felt herself grow hotter and wetter until her muscles were clenching and straining and she knew she had to have him inside her.

She released him from the sweet torment of her hand and mouth and slid up his lean, tall frame to kiss him again. He was more responsive than the previous time, his mouth opening eagerly to hers, tangling his tongue with hers even as their hands tangled together and she turned him and backed him up to the bed. He fell back onto it and she stretched out on top of him, watching the expressions that crossed his face as the movement brought them into full skin-on-skin contact.

She grasped his wrists and pinned them above his head. It was a symbolic gesture and they both knew it: he could easily free himself from her grasp any time he wanted to. But by that logic, he could have stopped her before she'd done more than kiss him, so there they were. One thing was certain, though: if he had thought this was a game, that was not the case now. Not with him arching up against her and grinding his hips into hers.

"Sherlock," Molly whispered, and his eyes widened as though amazed by the veneration in her voice. She pressed her hips back in response, feeling his still-hard cock rubbing against her labia and clit, making her shake as she squeezed her thighs around his, wanting and needing more of him. She'd wanted to draw this out even further, torment him some more, but it was tormenting her in the process and she couldn't stand it any longer.

She released his wrists and imprisoned him with her eyes instead, catching and holding his gaze as she grasped him with one hand and parted her lips more with the other. Time stopped, suspended itself just for now, just for her, and held its breath even as Molly held hers and slowly sheathed him inside her.

There were no words for this feeling, nor were any needed. Everything contracted around them and narrowed to just him and her and the bed and their lips and hands and skin. Molly rocked against him with an urgency borne of longing, and he answered in kind, hands moving from her waist to her hips to her breasts. His touch set off a spark that bypassed being a flame and went straight into a whirlpool of an inferno that sucked her down so deep into desire she wasn't sure how she would ever find her way back out again.

She moaned as he touched her, seeking her most sensitive areas and playing them mercilessly when he found them. Her body was his instrument now and he seemed determined to turn their duet into a symphony. His eyes lit up and a faint smile curved his lips as he found _that place_, the area of her clit that when pressed _just so_ always made her writhe, and he seemed to take pleasure from her pleasure now instead of being the mostly passive participant he had earlier.

It was too much: she felt her muscles start to ripple and she brought her hips down hard against his. He moaned, his long, knowing fingers stroking her clit faster as her wet oval of heat spread out further against his thighs. She rocked against him, moaning his name now, sensing that he was just as close as she was, both of them somehow holding their breath, waiting for that final moment as they hovered together on the edge of the precipice.

"Molly," Sherlock whispered one final time, and oh, God, yes, that was what she'd been waiting for. She came with a high pitched keen, every inch of her quivering and flowing into him like water, rising up and carrying him out to sea. He moaned loudly as she cried his name, his thrusts hard and raw and laced with desperate need, and she felt him climax and shudder and spill inside her.

She lay still against him for what felt like forever, unable to move or think in the aftermath of what they'd just done. She was sweaty and exhausted and felt gloriously, fantastically _alive. _But she also felt horribly ashamed and guilty. When she finally was able to slide bonelessly off of him she had the overpowering urge to sleep. Dimly she felt him turn to look at her, his expression curious mixed with concern, and without thinking she slid a hand up to cup his cheek as she whispered the words that she hoped he would understand, make him not despise her for all of this:

"_I am sorry. Forgive me."_

He laughed, then: actually laughed. It was warm and amused. She cracked her eyes open and studied him, wondering if he'd gone mad: if she had, too. Then he smiled at her, a genuine smile.

"Oh, Molly Hooper," he said softly. "There is nothing to forgive."

She frowned, confused. "But I… I made you… I guilted you into…"

"You made me? Molly, I outweigh you, am stronger and taller than you, and I know thirteen forms of martial arts. Explain to me, please, how you _made_ me do anything."

"But you…"

He shrugged slightly. "You needed this," he said simply, as though that explained everything, and perhaps it did. "It's been eating at you for a long time. You needed to let it out."

"But you were… I took your virginity," she said weakly. How could he possibly not be angry?

He shrugged again. "It is of no real consequence. Besides," he added with a yawn, "there's no one better for me to have given it to than you."

"Me?" She stared at him in amazement. "Why? After what I did?"

"You did nothing to which I did not acquiesce, Molly, so please stop feeling guilty. You neither raped me nor guilted me into this, despite what your moral code seems to be telling you. You were angry and hurting and…" he hesitated. "And I wanted to heal you. That's all."

"Heal me," she repeated, trying the words out and finding them sad and beautiful, especially since they came from him.

"You healed me," Sherlock said, touching her face with two fingers. "You saved me, Molly. And not just today. I wanted to give you something in return. And no, it wasn't out of pity," he added as he removed his hand, seeing the look on her face. "I am loathe to say it was… sentiment, but it was, so there you have it. Now. Do you think we could possibly stop talking about this? Apparently a near-death experience and sex make me in need of sleep."

Molly laughed. It was insane, it was completely fucked up, but they were okay and that was all that mattered. Relief washed over her and she nodded. "Yes. Good… good night, Sherlock."

"Good night, Molly," he said with another yawn. She drifted off, no longer worried, knowing somehow that he would still be there when she woke up.


End file.
